The Orpheus Series

No. VII.

THE

RENEWAL OF YOUTH

BY

A. E.

The Orpheus Press

3, Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, E.C.

THE RENEWAL OF YOUTH.
I.

/ am a part of all that I have met :
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that imtravelled "world . . .

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. — ULYSSES.

HUMANITY is no longer the child it was at
the beginning of the world. The spirit which,
prompted by some divine intent, flung itself
long ago into a vague, nebulous, drifting
nature, though it has endured through many
periods of youth, maturity, and age, has yet
had its own transformations. Its gay, wonder-
ful childhood gave way, as cycle after cycle
coiled itself into slumber, to more definite
purposes, and now it is old and burdened
with experiences. It is not an age that
quenches its fire, but it will not renew again
the activities which gave it wisdom. And so

it comes that men pause with a feeling which
they translate into weariness of life before the
accustomed joys and purposes of their race.
They wonder at the spell which induced their
fathers to plot and execute deeds which seem
to them to have no more meaning than a
whirl of dust. But their fathers had this
weariness also and concealed it from each
other in fear, for it meant the laying aside of
the sceptre, the toppling over of empires, the
chilling of the household warmth, and all
for a voice whose inner significance revealed
itself but to one or two among myriads.

The spirit has hardly emerged from the
childhood with which nature clothes it afresh
at every new birth, when the disparity between
the garment and the wearer becomes manifest :
the little tissue of joys and dreams woven
about it is found inadequate for shelter: it
trembles exposed to the winds blowing out of
the unknown. We linger at twilight with
some companion, still glad, contented, and in
tune with the nature which fills the orchards
with blossom, and sprays the hedges with
dewy blooms. The laughing lips give utter-
ance to wishes — ours until that moment.
Then the spirit, without warning, suddenly
falls into immeasurable age : a sphynx-like
face looks at us : our lips answer, but far from

the region of elemental being we inhabit, they
syllable in shadowy sound, out of old usage,
the response, speaking of a love and a hope
which we know have vanished from us for
evermore. So hour by hour the scourge of
the infinite drives us out of every nook and
corner of life we find pleasant. And this
always takes place when all is fashioned to
our liking : then into our dream strides the
wielder of the lightning : we get glimpses of
a world beyond us thronged with mighty,
exultant beings : our own deeds become
infinitesimal to us : the colours of our imagin-
ation, once so shining, grow pale as the living
lights of God glow upon them. We find a
little honey in the heart which we make
sweeter for some one, and then another lover,
whose forms are legion, sighs to us out of its
multitudinous being : we know that the old
love is gone. There is a sweetness in song or
in the cunning reimaging of the beauty we
see ; but the Magician of the Beautiful
whispers to us of his art, how we were with
him when he laid the foundations of the
world, and the song is unfinished, the fingers
grow listless. As we receive these intimations
of age our very sins become negative : we are
still pleased if a voice praises us, but we grow
lethargic in enterprises where the spur to

activity is fame or the acclamation of men.
At some point in the past we may have
struggled mightily for the sweet incense which
men offer to a towering personality : but the
infinite is for ever within man : we sighed for
other worlds and found that to be saluted as
victor by men did not mean acceptance by
the gods.

But the placing of an invisible finger upon
our lips when we would speak, the heart-throb
of warning where we would love, that we grow
contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not
mean that the spirit has ceased from its
labours, that the high-built beauty of the
spheres is to topple mistily into chaos, as a
mighty temple in the desert sinks into the
sand, watched only by a few barbarians too
feeble to renew its ancient pomp and the
ritual of its once shining congregations. Be-
fore we, who were the bright children of the
dawn, may return as the twilight race into
the silence, our purpose must be achieved, we
have to assume mastery over that nature
which now overwhelms us, driving into the
Fire-fold the flocks of stars and wandering
fires. Does it seem very vast and far away ?
Do you sigh at the long, long time ? Or does
it appear hopeless to you who perhaps return
with trembling feet evening after evening from

a little labour? But it is behind all these
things that the renewal takes place, when love
and grief are dead ; when they loosen their
hold on the spirit and it sinks back into itself,
looking out on the pitiful plight of those who,
like it, are the weary inheritors of so great
destinies : then a tenderness which is the most
profound quality of its being springs up like
the outraying of the dawn, and if in that mood
it would plan or execute it knows no weariness,
for it is nourished from the First Fountain.
As for these feeble children of the once
glorious spirits of the dawn, only a vast hope
can arouse them from so vast a despair, for
the fire will not invigorate them for the repe-
tition of petty deeds but only for the eternal
enterprise, the war in heaven, that conflict
between Titan and Zeus which is part of
the never-ending struggle of the human spirit
to assert its supremacy over nature. We,
who lie, crushed by this mountain nature piled
above us, must arise again, unite to storm the
heavens and sit on the seats of the mighty.

II.

WE speak out of too petty a spirit to each
other ; the true poems, said Whitman :

" Bring none, to his or to her terminus or to be content

and fnllt
Whom they take they take into space to behold the

birth of stars, to learn one of the meanings,
To launch off with absolute faitht to sweep through
the ceaseless rings and never be quiet again."

Here is inspiration — the voice of the soul.
Every word which really inspires is spoken as
if the Golden Age had never passed. The
great teachers ignore the personal identity
and speak to the eternal pilgrim. Too often
the form or surface far removed from beauty
makes us falter, and we speak to that form
and the soul is not stirred. But an equal
temper arouses it. To whoever hails in it the
lover, the hero, the magician, it will respond,
but not to him who accosts it in the name
and style of its outer self. How often do we
not long to break through the veils which
divide us from some one, but custom, conven-
tion, or a fear of being misunderstood prevent

us, and so the moment passes whose heat
might have burned through every barrier.
Out with it — out with it, the hidden heart,
the love that is voiceless, the secret tender
germ of an infinite forgiveness. That speaks
to the heart. That pierces through many a
vesture of the Soul. Our companion struggles
in some labyrinth of passion. We help him,
we think, with ethic and moralities. Ah, very
well they are ; well to know and to keep, but
wherefore ? For their own sake ? No, but
that the King may arise in his beauty. We
write that in letters, in books, but to the face
of the fallen who brings back remembrance ?
Who calls him by his secret name ? Let a
man but feel for what high cause is his battle,
for what is his cyclic labour, and a warrior who
is invincible fights for him and he draws upon
divine powers. Our attitude to man and to
nature, expressed or not, has something of the
effect of ritual, of evocation. As our aspira-
tion so is our inspiration. We believe in life
universal, in a brotherhood which links the
elements to man, and makes the glow-worm
feel far off something of the rapture of the
seraph hosts. Then we go out into the living
world, and what influences pour through us !
We are " at league with the stones of the
field." The winds of the world blow radiantly

upon us as in the early time. We feel wrapt
about with love, with an infinite tenderness
that caresses us. Alone in our rooms as we
ponder, what sudden abysses of light open
within us ! The Gods are so much nearer
than we dreamed. We rise up intoxicated
with the thought, and reel out seeking an
equal companionship under the great night
and the stars.

Let us get near to realities. We read too
much. We think of that which is " the goal,
the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the
resting-place, the asylum and the Friend."
Is it by any of these dear and familiar names ?
The soul of the modern mystic is becoming a
mere hoarding place for uncomely theories.
He creates an uncouth symbolism, and plasters
his soul within with names drawn from the
Kabala or ancient Sanskrit, and makes alien
to himself the intimate powers of his spirit,
things which in truth are more his than the
beatings of his heart. Could we not speak of
them in our own tongue and the language of
to-day will be as sacred as any of the past.
From the Golden One, the child of the divine,
comes a voice to its shadow. It is stranger
to our world, aloof from our ambitions, with
a destiny not here to be fulfilled. It says:
" You are of dust while I am robed in opal-

10

escent airs. You dwell in houses of clay, I in
a temple not made by hands. I will not go
with thee, but thou must come with me.*'
And not alone is the form of the divine aloof
but the spirit behind the form. It is called
the Goal truly, but it has no ending. It is
the Comforter, but it waves away our joys
and hopes like the angel with the flaming
sword, Though it is the Resting-place, it
stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to con-
quest. It is the Friend indeed, but it will
not yield to our desires. Is it this strange,
unfathomable self we think to know, and
awaken to, by what is written, or by study of
it as so many planes of consciousness ? But
in vain we store the upper chambers of the
mind with such quaint furniture of thought.
No archangel makes his abode therein. They
abide only in the shining. No wonder that
the Gods do not incarnate. We cannot say
we do pay reverence to these awful powers.
We repulse the living truth by our doubts and
reasonings. We would compel the Gods to
fall in with our petty philosophy rather than
trust in the heavenly guidance. Ah, to think
of it, those dread deities, the divine Fires, to
be so enslaved ! We have not comprehended
the meaning of the voice which cried, " Pre-
pare ye the way of the Lord," or this, " Lift

ii

up your heads, O ye gates. Be ye lifted up,
ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory
shall come in." Nothing that we read is
useful unless it calls up living things in the
soul. To read a mystic book truly is to
invoke the powers. If they do not rise up
plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual
things, then is our labour barren. We only
encumber the mind with useless symbols.
They knew better ways long ago. " Master
of the Green-waving Planisphere,
Lord of the Azure Expanse, . . . it is
thus we invoke," cried the magicians of old.

And us, let us invoke them with joy, let us
call upon them with love, the Light we hail,
or the Divine Darkness we worship with
silent breath. That silence cries aloud to the
Gods. Then they will approach us. Then
we may learn that speech of many colours,
for they will not speak in our mortal tongue ;
they will not answer to the names of men.
Their names are rainbow glories. Yet these
are mysteries and they cannot be reasoned
out or argued over. We cannot speak truly
of them from report, or description, or from
what another has written. A relation to the
thing in itself alone is our warrant, and this
means we must set aside our intellectual
self-sufficiency and await guidance. It will

12

surely come to those who wait in trust, a glow,
a heat in the heart announcing the awakening
of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic
breath into the brain, there is a hurtling of
visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound as of
great waters vibrant and musical in their
flowing, and murmurs from a single yet
multitudinous being. In such a mood, when
the far becomes near, the strange familiar,
and the infinite possible, he wrote from whose
words we get the inspiration :

" To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep
through the ceaseless rings and never be
quiet again"

Such a faith and such an unrest be ours :
faith which is mistrust of the visible ; unrest
which is full of a hidden surety and reliance.
We, when we fall into pleasant places, rest
and dream our strength away. Before every
enterprise and adventure of the soul we
calculate in fear our power to do. But
remember, " Oh, disciple, in thy work for thy
brother thou hast many allies ; in the winds,
in the air, in all the voices of the silent shore."
These are the far-wandered powers of our
own nature and they turn again home at our
need. We came out of the Great Mother-
Life for the purposes of soul. Are her dar-

13

lings forgotten where they darkly wander and
strive ? Never. Are not the lives of all her
heroes proof? Though they seem to stand
alone the eternal Mother keeps watch on
them, and voices far away and unknown to
them before arise in passionate defence, and
hearts beat warm to help them. Aye, if we
could look within we would see vast nature
stirred on their behalf, and institutions shaken,
until the truth they fight for triumphs, and
they pass, and a wake of glory ever widening
behind them trails down the ocean of the
years.

Thus the warrior within us works, or, if we
choose to phrase it so, it is the action of the
spiritual will. Shall we not, then, trust in it
and face the unknown defiant and fearless of
its dangers. Though we seem to go alone to
the high, the lonely, the pure, we need not
despair. Let no one bring to this task the
mood of the martyr or of one who thinks he
sacrifices something. Yet let all who will
come. Let them enter the path, facing all
things in life and death with a mood at once
gay and reverent, as beseems those who
are immortal — who are children to-day, but
whose hands to-morrow may grasp the sceptre,
sitting down with the Gods as equals and
companions. " What a man thinks, that he

is : that is the old secret." In this self-
conception lies the secret of life, the way of
escape and return. We have imagined our-
selves into littleness, darkness and feebleness.
We must imagine ourselves into greatness.
" If thou wilt not equal thyself to God thou
canst not understand God. The like is only
intelligible by the like." In some moment of
more complete imagination the thought-born
may go forth and look on the ancient Beauty.
So it was in the mysteries long ago and may
well be to-day. The poor dead shadow was
laid to sleep, forgotten in its darkness, as the
fiery power, mounting from heart to head,
went forth in radiance. Not then did it rest,
nor ought we. The dim worlds dropped
behind it, the lights of earth disappeared as
it neared the heights of the immortals. There
was One seated on a throne, One dark and
bright with ethereal glory. It arose in greeting.
The radiant figure laid its head against the
breast which grew suddenly golden, and
Father and Son vanished in that which has
no place or name.

III.

Who are exiles ? as for me

Where beneath the diamond dome

Lies the light on hill or tree
There my palace is and home.

WE are outcasts from Deity ; therefore we
defame the place of our exile. But who is
there may set apart his destiny from the earth
which bore him ? I am one of those who
would bring back the old reverence for the
Mother, the magic, the love. I think, meta-
physician, you have gone astray. You would
seek within yourself for the fountain of life.
Yes, there is the true, the only light. But
do not dream it will lead you further away
from the earth, but rather deeper into its
heart. By it you are nourished with those
living waters you would drink. You are yet
in the womb and unborn, and the Mother
breathes for you the diviner airs. Dart out
your furthest ray of thought to the original, and
yet you have not found a new path of your
own. Your ray is still enclosed in the parent

16

ray, and only on the sidereal streams are you
borne to the freedom of the deep, to the sacred
stars whose distance maddens, and to the
lonely Light of Lights.

Let us, therefore, accept the conditions
and address ourselves with wonder, with awe,
with love, as we well may, to that being in
whom we move. I abate no jot of those
vaster hopes, yet I would pursue that ardent
aspiration, content as to here and to-day. I
do not believe in a nature red with tooth and
claw. If indeed she appears so terrible to any
it is because they themselves have armed her.
Again, behind the anger of the Gods there is
a love. Are the rocks barren ? Lay your brow
against them and learn what memories they
keep. Is the brown earth unbeautiful ? Yet
lie on the breast of the Mother and you shall
be aureoled with the dews of faery. The
earth is the entrance to the Halls of Twilight.
What emanations are those that make radiant
the dark woods of pine ! Round every leaf
and tree and over all the mountains wave the
fiery tresses of that hidden sun which is the
soul of the earth and parent of your soul. But
we think of these things no longer. Like the
prodigal we have wandered far from our home,
but no more return. We idly pass or wait as
strangers in the halls our spirit built.

17

Sad or fain no more to live P
I have pressed the lips of pain :

With the kisses lovers give
Ransomed ancient powers again.

I would raise this shrinking soul to a more
universal acceptance. What ! does it aspire
to the All, and yet deny by its revolt and
inner protest the justice of Law ? From
sorrow we shall take no less and no more
than from our joys. For if the one reveals to
the soul the mode by which the power over-
flows and fills it here, the other indicates to it
the unalterable will which checks excess and
leads it on to true proportion and its own
ancestral ideal. Yet men seem for ever to
fly from their destiny of inevitable beauty;
because of delay the power invites and lures
no longer but goes out into the highways with a
hand of iron. We look back cheerfully enough
upon those old trials out of which we have
passed ; but we have gleaned only an after-
math of wisdom and missed the full harvest it
the will has not risen royally at the moment
in unison with the will of the Immortal, even
though it comes rolled round with terror and
suffering and strikes at the heart of clay.

Through all these things, in doubt, despair,
poverty, sick, feeble or baffled, we have yet to
learn reliance. " / will not leave thee or forsake

18

thee" are the words of the most ancient spirit
to the spark wandering in the immensity of its
own being. This high courage brings with it
a vision. It sees the true intent in all circum-
stance out of which its own emerges to meet
it. Before it the blackness melts into forms
of beauty, and back of all illusions is seen the
old enchanter tenderly smiling, the dark,
hidden Father enveloping his children.

All things have their compensations. For
what is absent here there is always, if we
seek, a nobler presence about us.

Captive, see what stars give light

In the hidden heart of clay :
At their radiance dark and bright

Fades the dreamy King of Day.

We complain of conditions, but this very
imperfection it is which urges us to arise and
seek for the .Isles of the Immortals. What
we lack recalls the fulness. The soul has
seen a brighter day than this and a sun which
never sets. Hence the retrospect : " Thou
hast been in Eden the garden of God ; every
precious stone was thy covering, the sardius,
topaz and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx,
the jasper, the sapphire, emerald
Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God ;
thou hast walked up and down in the midst
of the stones of fire." We would point out

19

these radiant avenues of return ; but some-
times we feel in our hearts that we sound but
cockney voices, as guides amid the ancient
temples, the cyclopean crypts sanctified by
the mysteries. To be intelligible we replace
the opalescent shining by the terms of the
scientist, and we prate of occult physiology in
the same breath with the Most High. Yet
when the soul has the vision divine it knows
not it has a body. Let it remember, and the
breath of glory kindles it no more ; it is once
again a captive. After all it does not make
the mysteries clearer to speak in physical
terms and do violence to our intuitions. If
we ever use these centres, as fires we shall see
them, or they shall well up within us as
fountains of potent sound. We may satisfy
people's minds with a sense correspondence,
and their souls may yet hold aloof. We shall
only inspire by the magic of a superior beauty.
Yet this too has its dangers. " Thou hast
corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy bright-
ness," continues the seer. If we follow too
much the elusive beauty of form we will miss
the spirit. The last secrets are for those who
translate vision into being. Does the glory
fade away before you ? Say truly in your
heart, " I care not. I will wear the robes I
am endowed with to-day." You are already

20

become beautiful, being beyond desire and
free.

Night and day no more eclipse
Friendly eyes that on us shine,

Speech from old familiar lips,
Playmates of a youth divine.

To childhood once again. We must regain
the lost state. But it is to the giant and
spiritual childhood of the young immortals we
must return, when into their clear and trans-
lucent souls first fell the rays of the father-
beings. The men of old were intimates of
wind and wave and playmates of many a
brightness long since forgotten. The rapture
of the fire was their rest ; their outgoing was
still consciously through universal being. By
darkened images we may figure something
vaguely akin, as when in rare moments under
the stars the big dreamy heart of childhood is
pervaded with quiet and brimmed full with
love. Dear children of the world, so tired
to-day — so weary seeking after the light.
Would you recover strength and immortal
vigour ? Not one star alone, your star, shall
shed its happy light upon you, but the All you
must adore. Something intimate, secret,
unspeakable, akin to thee, will emerge silently,
insensibly, and ally itself with thee as thou

21

gatherest thyself from the four quarters of the
earth. We shall go back to the world of the
dawn, but to a brighter light than that which
opened up this wondrous story of the cycles.
The forms of elder years will reappear in our
vision, the father-beings once again. So we
shall grow at home amid these grandeurs, and
with that All- Presence about us may cry in
our hearts, " At last is our meeting, Immortal.
Oh, starry one, now is our rest ! "

Brothers weary, come away ;

We will quench the heart's desire
Past the gateways of the day

Jn the rapture of the fire.

22

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

THESE books are produced in connection
with " ORPHEUS/' a quarterly magazine of
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The following is a list of books, published
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THE ORPHEUS SERIES.

(1) " THE HERO IN MAN," by A. E., with
Foreword by Clifford Bax. 2nd Edition. On
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(3) "TWENTY CHINESE POEMS/' para-
phrased by Clifford Bax, and accompanied by

23

four illustrations in colour by Arthur Bowmar-
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(5) " DREAM-SONGS FOR THE BELOVED," by
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(6) " SOLAR SYMBOLS AND THEIR MEANING,"
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(7) " THE RENEWAL OF YOUTH," by A. E.,
(prose). 6d. net.

(8) "THE SISTERS AND GREEN MAGIC," by
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(9) " POEMS DRAMATIC AND LYRICAL," by
Clifford Bax. [In October.]

Other volumes will follow. All these books
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Women's Printing Society, Limited, Brick Street, Piccadilly.

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